


Bittersweet

by i_write_for_my_friends



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Mother-Son Relationship, Slight Canon Divergence, this pair is so rare it'd give u food poisoning if u took a bite out of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 16:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6712162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_write_for_my_friends/pseuds/i_write_for_my_friends
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst day of her life was the one when they didn't come home. She sunk to her knees, heaving sobs while holding herself because she alone was the only one affected, and she alone was the only one who could offer comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bittersweet

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy happy birthday ryoma i didn't even realize it was his big day today  
> also i have absolutely nothing against takumi/oboro at all and i love takumi i am not. attacking him im sorry *pets the pineapple*
> 
> anyway this.is bad i hate it

She knows realistically she can’t have what she wants, for everything to be back the way they were before tragedy stole what was rightfully hers, but now, as a grown woman, shaped from the past events in her life, she’s thankful for the unfortunate events, and she wouldn't change a single part of it.

 

The worst day of her life was the one when they didn't come home. She sunk to her knees, heaving sobs while holding herself because she alone was the only one affected, and she alone was the only one who could offer comfort. The letter she had gripped so ferociously that it turned her knuckles white detailed as her mother and father were tailors in service of a list of noble and wealthy families, her new home would soon be chosen for her and would welcome her with open arms. The orphan never read the scroll all the way through. She shivered on her floor, cursing every Nohrian to burn in hell, and she wanted to send whoever was responsible for taking her parents away from her there personally.

Training for that day was essential to her routines. She worked hard for her experience with the naginata, setting goals to press herself further when she believed there was nothing she could do to improve, knowing well enough she would need to be a master and more if she wanted to avenge them. The lancer wasn’t going to let the family business die with them as well, so she practiced the tailoring skills they’d taught her, enriching her love of fashion past her basic knowledge, both skills catching the queen’s eye. She was soon enlisted to serve her youngest son, using her art of the naginata to protect him as his second retainer.

She meets her lord the next day, introducing herself humbly to him, then learns his first retainer makes him look and sound good in comparison. The prince comes off as distant and snobbish, but relievingly is nothing that her first impression guessed. The three spent the majority of their time together teasing one or the other and seeing who could come up with the worst jokes. He is down-to-earth, personable, and hates Nohrians as passionately as she. It’s because of these traits that she gradually falls in love, and allows these romantic developments to grow. She doesn’t stop when Hinata groans, rolling his eyes and giving her a hard time, she’s gotten her first crush and nothing could be more important to her.

Her patience is growing thin; maybe she’s asking too much of him, or maybe no one is too oblivious to not notice her advances, and he is intentionally ignoring her. She balls her fists and falls into her pillow after being dismissed for the night, screaming _why_ until her voice is hoarse. She sputters while she bawls, wondering where she went wrong, wondering if there was anything she could do to correct this mistake, or she wonders if she was never good enough for him anyway. It’s nearly impossible for her not to get angry at the kidnapped Nohrian princess, whom when her prince was near he’d stutter and _mysteriously_ be bashful around. Once the decision was final, she wiped her sorrow away and vowed never to waste another tear on him.

When his older brother, the crown prince, starts talking to her, it’s not because of how vulnerable she's become, it’s because he sees her with the same exterior he brandishes each day; one that hides pain, one hiding loss. He manages to engross in depthful, meaningful, and enlightening conversations with her, and she is able to realize letting go of her infatuation is much easier than it seemed months prior. Days would come where she anticipated seeing him more than her once beloved lord, excited to pick things up where they left them. Sometimes she’d let the idea of interest linger in her mind, but never long enough for her to weigh the cons against the pros.

 

There was the day that came when she opened up about her parents to the prince, a younger, more naive her would be astounded to hear it was the older of the two. He found her, assumingly doubled over in pain in the kitchen, discovering that after he put out the cooking flame she is actually weeping. “ _Oboro,”_ he calls to her in a tone so soothing and filled with concern that she almost can't match a face to what she heard. When he approaches her apprehensively, not in fear of being too close, but _getting_ too close, the lancer knows who it is and allows him to take one of her wrists that she's crying into.

_“D-don’t, look at me, Lord Ryoma. Please,”_ she hides her face with her free hand, coughing between her sniffles and hoping she is all cried out. _“I’m an ugly crier,”_

A sad, sweet smile crawls onto his face and he supresses his reflex to laugh. _“That’s a funny imagination you have there. If you want to talk about it, I won’t disappear.”_

So she did, and she omitted no detail of her past to her listening ear. The prince would nod despite her buried face in his chest, telling her that it’s alright and they would be so proud of their girl now if they saw what she accomplished on her own. She thanked him earnestly for indulging in her self-pity, and he reminded her that he’d lost all of his parents too, and knew half of where she was coming from. She stayed with him even after her tears ran dry, her head still on his chest uncomfortably so with all the armor between her ear and his heart, but its rhythm never left her, even after she fell asleep.

 

She remembers it so clear in her head when he came to see her from a strenuous day of nothing but meetings of tactics and policies and training with his retainers. When the door opened, then closed, she leapt into his arms and he twirled her in the air, giving a kiss to her nose before planting her feet back on the floor. Though his duties become longer and tire him out more each evening, he never brings his stress to their shared space and she _loves_ him for that. Suddenly, he’s telling her of great news that he was graciously given the next week off from any of his responsibilities.

_“Why?”_ She’s thrilled, but he's to take the throne and become king just after the war. He needs this time to prepare now more than ever.

_“I was just getting to that,”_ Her silence says he can continue. He clears his throat before going back.

_“I’ve been thinking a lot about you, Oboro,”_ he goes, referring to her with her name, and not the pet name she has a new mean thing to say about whenever he uses it. _“How strong you are, and how much your family mattered to you,”_ he pauses for emphasis, and she knew he was going to be a great speaker when Hoshido was his. _“We are at loss without them, and I wish they were still here, frankly. I could never mean to replace them in your heart, but,”_ the prince broke again, digging in his pocket for something too small for her to see. _“I would love very much to be your new family.”_ Taking her arm, he bent his knee, looking at her in a way he never had before. She freezes in place. _“Would you create one with me? Will you marry me, Oboro?”_

She wailed, and her boyfriend caught her before she crashed to the ground. She forced a grin that vanished as soon as it formed to assure him aside from the pain, she would burst at any given time with joy. _“I love you so much,”_ he reminds her, kissing tears away that rolled down her cheeks and dripped off her jaw, and she cries into the crane of his neck. She would never be an ugly crier to him, ugly wasn’t a word he ever pictured to describe her when he’d seen every form of her. There was nothing that wasn’t less than beautiful about every aspect of her.

 

The next time she cries is a year later, when she wakes up to blood trickling down her leg. Her sniveling arouses her husband beside her before she can slip out of their sheets, bathe, and change, dealing with the pain on her own. He asks what’s wrong and she whimpers with a crack in her voice that she miscarried again. She’s failed her promise of creating a family with him twice but he wraps her closer and tighter and whispers that it’s not her fault. He mourns too but worries of an heir are alien to him and his thoughts. She apologizes in his ear but he could never be mad at her, even if she impaled him on her own spear.

When her third pregnancy finally fell through after six months, she's elated to have Shiro, finally after waiting so long. She always wanted a boy, and she swore to Ryoma she would love him, even if he inherited his father’s blind eye for fashion, though she doubted her son did since the tiny hairs on his head were the same blue as hers.

She screamed when they took her baby away from her. Knowing it was her own husband’s idea to lock him away, far from her and reality was the ultimate betrayal. He took him away from his parents, like hers were taken from her, and she threw whatever she could grab on shelves, letting them shatter into shards of nothing. She didn’t talk to him for a week, and ignored the letters and haiku he sent to make it up to her as well.

 

Her son is back with them, but he’s not an infant, he is only short a few years of her age. He trains with the naginata instead of the katana, he made his own outfit, stylishly pulling off red with just the perfect amount of blue in his clothes to match his hair, and his manners and respect towards her make her so proud to be his mother. He spends far more time with her than his father (not that she minds), and when she asks him why, he shrugs his shoulders and explains rather bluntly _“Dad’s real stuffy. I don’t think he cares.”_

_“Of course he does,”_ She puts her comb in her mouth and pins down stubborn strands of his hair as she clips the rest. _“That’s why you were raised in the deeprealms.”_ Her son swirls his chair so he is looking at her with his best knowing glare.

_“So do you do Dad's hair, too, or does his barber miss all of his protruding hairs as well?”_

His mother smacks him before spinning his chair back so she could work on it properly. He winced, rubbing the spot where she got him good. _“It wasn’t my idea, Shiro. I stopped talking to him for a while after you were taken away from me. It wasn’t safe to raise you here, but I didn’t understand that. You’re old enough and capable of defending yourself now.”_ Her son could sense there was more she wanted to say, so he didn't interrupt. _“I know he can be very difficult sometimes, but your father’s done everything he has out of love. He wanted to have you as much as I did, sweetie. You should talk to him more.”_ She planted a kiss on his forehead and he went, absorbing everything she told him as he did.

 

She sees her son as they had planned with a box in her hands. He gawks at it, saying a _box_ is how the great lobster expresses his love, and she shakes her head with a smirk, telling him to open it. His eyes grow wide at how many there are, and she halts his grabby hands from getting too excited and picking before she can pull out a worn scroll that's been handled with delicate care despite its age. _“They’re love letters. This was the first one he wrote to me. I’ve saved all of them.”_

He’s scanning the ink, impressed with his father’s neat penmanship because he always imagined it was messy and big and written fast, it’s not what he expected even slightly. Fancy words spun around his grasp and he felt even less encouraged to do _something_ to show his mother he loved her, and this was his father’s _first_ letter.

_“Are you sure? The same old man with the crazy hair? This can’t be real.”_

_“Yes, the same man, Shiro. He’s not that old yet.”_

_“I don’t know how I’m gonna compete with this, Mom. He just beats me in everything I ever try.”_

_“Compete? With what?”_ She gives him a sneer as to say _what the hell are you two plotting?_

  _“With showing you who loves you more.”_

She puts her box of letters down gently on the table behind her, softening her snarl and distorted face.

_“It’s my job as a mom to know how much her son loves her, sweetie. You don’t have to do anything and I’ll still know, always and forever.”_ The right side of his mouth pulls and he ruffles his hair. There was no doubt in his mind that there didn't exist a woman more pure and special than his mom, not even the cute Nohrian girl that thought talking to stones would enchant them and lend her the power to divine the stars.

_“I’m still going to think of something, Mom. I’m lucky to call you that.”_ She pulls her son in, letting her tears flow naturally from her eyes. She’s reminded of her parents who are watching her from their resting place, and she knows they couldn't be happier for her.

_“I know you will, Shiro. I wouldn’t trade you or your dad for any other family in the world.”_


End file.
